Christian Theology and Apologetics

Archive for the tag “Evil”

At this point and time the media outlets are reporting that at least nine people are dead, seven more wounded, and the gunman was killed at the scene. I think we should all pause and pray for those who have been affected by the senseless actions of this individual, who I will refuse to name. I write this with a very heavy heart, and it grieves me to see such violence carried out in our nation, or any nation for that matter. From the reports I’ve seen thus far, it seems that this murderer had an anti-religious bias; in fact, witnesses testify to the fact that he specifically targeted Christians. The gunman had Christians stand up, he then stated, “Good, because you’re a Christian, you’re going to see God in just about one second.” He then shot and killed anyone professing Christ as their Lord.

The media is reporting that they are unsure as to the motive for this crime; One thing to be sure of, this man was a disturbed individual. Just by looking at the crime itself, I think the motive is clear; he hated people and wanted to see them suffer. What also seems clear is that he harbored some serious animosity (for lack of a better word) toward those of the Christian faith specifically, and those of other faiths as well. From what has been garnished from online accounts, this gunman considered himself non-religious and did not like organized religion. It’s unclear whether this signifies some sort of Atheism, Agnosticism or some other worldview, but it does add credence to a possible motive, and that is to punish those whom he disagreed with, those who were religious.

Some will ask, “Where was God,” when this occurred; I will respond simply. God was in there in the form of a Grandmother performing CPR on one of the victims; He was there as Chris Mintz, a thirty-year-old Army Vet, who was shot at least five times trying to stop the shooter. Mint told a woman (possibly the aforementioned grandmother) that it was his son’s birthday, as she held his hand and prayed with him. God was there as the first responders came to the rescue. lastly, God was there in the victims themselves, those he killed professed Christ as their Lord and Savior, and this cost them their lives. For those who are still seeking answers as to the problem of pain and suffering, I wrote on this topic here.

I pray that the response to this shooting is one of unification, and an honest attempt to understand what happened. However, I am not optimistic about the Presidents comments about this shooting. Instead of taking this and turning into a unifying moment for the nation, he divided the people. President Obama remarked, “Our thoughts and prayers are not enough. . . and it does nothing from preventing this carnage from being inflicted someplace else in America.” Now to be fair, the context was that our prayers are not enough and that we need to act, but it is difficult to view his statement and not come to the conclusion that he believes changing the gun control laws will result in fewer deaths than prayer.

It is my reasonable belief that bringing about spiritual transformation in this nation would lead to far fewer deaths than simply changing the law. For instance, the school the shooting occurred at is a gun-free zone, the law is already in-place to protect the people, but it failed to do so. Why? Evil people do not care about following the law. The law presupposes lawlessness, or evil as I like to call it. The creation of law is for the protection of the innocent, it is created so that there is a just system to punish those who wish to do harm on others. So to be clear, changing gun control laws will not stop acts of violence—evil people will still be evil, with or without the more laws and with or without guns. A spiritual transformation will bring about change (regardless of the law).

In popular culture it is often asked, “if there is a God, why is there so much evil in the world?” Thus, many see the existence of evil as somehow incompatible with the existence of an omnibenevolent being (God). C. S. Lewis properly identified the problem of evil as the problem of pain.[1] Read more…